When Fantasy Becomes Reality
If you’re anything like me, you may find rather appealing those wonderful fantasy worlds depicted in video games, comics, TV and film that bend and twist what we humans call reality. More often then not, these fantasy worlds are more appealing then the real world itself. Some more salient examples of the most popular fantasy worlds at present are the virtual lives we live online via IM, myriad social networking sites and those downright addictive MMORPG’s. These worlds can prove so immersive, that some of those immersed forget to attend to the basic maintenance needs that these rather fragile bodies we inhabit require. The rash of deaths from MMORPG players in Asia over the last few years is a notable example of this. Even single player games, like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, create a world that is so incredibly detailed and immersive, it can be difficult to get up the nerve to turn it off.
Fortunately for those who are helplessly addicted to virtual or fantasy worlds, the real world may not be as mundane as we think. In the past two weeks, scientists have made some startling discoveries that prove the lines between our worlds of fantasy and reality are starting to blur. I submit the following examples for your review.
Kryptonite is Real
In a Serbian mine, a new mineral was discovered this week. It just so happens that this mineral bears the scientific name sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide. Ring a bell? If you paid close attention when when watching Superman Returns, you may have noticed this same chemical name written on crates of kryptonite stolen by Lex Luthor and used to build his Fortress of Solitude. Sure, this stuff is white, not green, but who cares? It would still stop the world’s strongest man, should he ever decide to drop in and pay us a visit.
Mario’s Mushrooms
If you’ve only played one video game in your life, I’ll wager it might have featured a strange little plumber who fancies pink princesses and little dudes with mushroom hats. As you may recall, Mario’s friend Peach is the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom, a land filled with fantastic flourishing fungi. For the denizens of this realm and our little red hero, these fungi serve as everything from background decor to trampolines. But Mario’s worlds aren’t the only ones to feature enormous mushrooms. In the most recent expansion pack of the Elder Scrolls IV Series, Shivering Isles, staggering mushroom trees fill the psychedelic landscape of Mania. But if you took a moment right now and looked outside your window in the real world right now, you may notice the conspicuous lack of freakishly tall fungi. Sadly, the massive fungi seem to be relegated to the worlds of fantasy only. That was, until recently. Scientists just this week made a startling discovery.
About 350-400 million years ago, give or take a few millenia, the dry land on Earth was covered with massive 20-foot-tall fungi. These monstrous mushroom cousins, called Prototaxites, towered over the trees of the day, which were only a few feet tall back then. Even though we’ve known of Prototaxites for over a century, only in the past week did scientists conclusively prove the species to be a fungus and not a lichen or conifer. So who knows, maybe Mario’s stories really are based on reality…a reality that happened hundreds of millions of years ago.
Official Fallout 3 Forums
In the late nineties, Black Isle Studios produced two of the finest computer RPG’s ever made: Fallout and Fallout 2. I can’t say enough about how perfectly these games balanced humor and story, creating a world that was at once endearing and believable. In 2002, Bethesda Softworks announced that they had bought the rights to the Fallout franchise from a defunct Interplay and were working on the sequel. When I saw the poster at E3 last year, I nearly filled my pants. One of my greatest fantasies and the fantasy of many other Fallout fans around the world, was at long last becoming a reality! And here was proof! But since then, Bethesda has been almost completely silent regarding Fallout 3. Nearly a full year passes. And then suddenly last week, without any preamble or prior warning, Bethesda opened the Official Fallout 3 Forums on their website. Here they invite fans a chance to participate in the game’s development. More importantly for me, it means that the game is one step closer to becoming a finished product. My fantasy may soon become a reality.
Reality begets fancy, fancy begets fantasy, fantasy becomes reality? Perhaps. One things for sure, be careful what you wish for. Tomorrow, it just might be real.
-Vince
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